BRIT awards 2012

The nominations for the 2012 BRIT awards were announced today at a fancy do at the Savoy in that London. It was already announced that Ed Sheeran and Jessie J were going to dominate – he’s picked up 4 nominations, she’s got 3, while Emeli Sande has already claimed the Critics Choice Award. Blur will perform on the night and receive the outstanding contribution to music award, so well done them. Bon Iver gets a couple of nods, James Blake and Anna Calvi get one each, and the best international female category is all sorts of amazing.

We’ve got the full list of nominations for you below. Voila:

British Male: James Blake, James Morrison, Noel Gallagher, Professor Green, Ed Sheeran

British Female: Adele, Florence and the Machine, Jessie J, Kate Bush, Laura Marling

British Breakthrough: Anna Calvi, Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sande, Jessie J, The Vaccines

British Group: Arctic Monkeys, Chase And Status, Coldplay, Elbow, Kasabian

British Single: Adele, ‘Someone Like You’; Ed Sheeran, ‘The A Team’; Example, ‘Changed The Way You Kissed Me’; Jessie J, ‘Price Tag’; JLS, ‘She Makes Me Wanna’; Military Wives, ‘Wherever You Are’; Olly Murs/Rizzle Kicks, ‘Heart Skips A Beat’; One Direction, ‘What Makes You Beautiful’; Pixie Lott, ‘All About Tonight’; The Wanted, ‘Glad You Came’

British Album: Adele, 21; Coldplay, Mylo Xyloto; PJ Harvey, Let England Shake; Ed Sheeran, +; Florence and the Machine, Ceremonials

International Male: Aloe Blacc, Bon Iver, Bruno Mars, Ryan Adams, David Guetta

International Female: Beyonce, Bjork, Feist, Lady Gaga, Rihanna

International Group: Fleet Foxes, Foo Fighters, Jay Z/Kanye West, Lady Antebellum, Maroon 5

International Breakthrough: Aloe Blacc, Bon Iver, Foster The People, Lana Del Rey, Nicki Minaj

The Swiss - Bubble Bath

Track of the week:

‘Bubble Bath’ by The Swiss (Glimmers Plastic edit)

I really, really liked The Swiss EP that came out not too long ago, and I find most of their tunes very catchy and nifty. So it’s always interesting to see whether or not an edit/remix can make it more fun, or different fun, or keep it as fun while being a bit different, and so on. Glimmers do keep it danceable and catchy though, so no worries there. Perhaps they make it even a bit more ready for the dance floor (not that the original wasn’t, but you know what I mean). A bit more innocent fun with some cheesy stuff in there, but I like cheesy at the right moments. With the running time under the four minutes it can also stay high energy without wearing you out too much.

http://hypem.com/track/1091823/The+Swiss+-+Bubble+Bath+Glimmers+Plastic+Edit+

‘Invisible Light’ by Scissor Sisters

Liking the Scissor Sisters is probably a bit uncool with their big unashamedness and poppy songs. However, I always find people who just say what they like whether or not everyone plus Pitchfork hates it infinitely cooler than people who only like what they’re supposed to like. With that said generally, I don’t like Scissor Sisters’ output, (un)fashionable or not. So not sure where that puts me. I liked that ‘Take Your Mama Out All Night’ one (if that’s not the correct title I’m sorry!), but I’m not a fan of their other work. The first thing that I noticed is how the male vocalist has dropped his, ehrm, voice, as he is singing deeper, if you can call it singing, as it is almost a mix of singing and spoken word. It starts with “Babylon”and “Zion” imagery, which I felt were more of a “ohh look how interesting we can be” than actually aiding to the vibe or story of the song. Perhaps others won’t have that problem though. The choruses are really, really pop and for the mainstream dance floor. So not sure about that. I do like some of the more disco bits though, and don’t be surprised at the sight of me on the dance floor when that instrumental thing around the five minute mark kicks in, but it is not something I would put on at home or put in a set or something.

http://hypem.com/track/1088108/Scissor+Sisters+-+Invisible+Light

‘Struck Dumb’ by The Futureheads

The Futureheads, ah, they were from that “school” with bands like The Rakes, with the notable difference that I liked The Rakes’ debut more. Arguably they both went downhill from there. Surprisingly, I’m not so sure this isn’t a song by Maximo Park, because I find that even the voice sounds eerily similar. Perhaps it has been too long since I last listened to Maximo Park to really tell the difference though. Anyway, yeah, nice and bouncy but, like most of all those bands more recent output, not that spectacular really. Nothing that grabs you or makes you want to dance, and lyrically I’d rather listen to Pulp sing ‘Glory Days’, which I think is much smarter though it deals with roughly the same subject I imagine. I don’t think this is going to get them out of their alleged slump really.

http://hypem.com/track/1092084/The+Futureheads+-+Struck+Dumb

‘Runway, Houses, City, Clouds’ by Tame Impala

To be honest, I had grown tired of that garagey, noisy scene a bit, and everything affiliated with it. But this I well like, and that’s a first in 2010 probably. It’s a bit shoegaze along with some garagey rock, and I just love that fast guitar play. It’s got a bit of a Sixties/Seventies vibe to it you know, bit of a psychedelia thing. Also love that even danceable instrumental bit around the 3:30 mark. After that it goes more into shoegaze mode again, and it has all the time in the world to do that, with a seven minute running time.

http://hypem.com/track/1095210/Tame+Impala+-+Runway+Houses+City+Clouds

‘Miranda’ (Jacques Renault edit)

Big love for Jacques Renault. Not sure about this one though. It is very, I don’t know, some Ibiza beach party with all kinds of bikini clad girls and beer bellied guys with, well, beers in plastic cups or something. That’s how the start comes across to me, anyway. Cut a bit forward, and suddenly we’ve got a rollicking bass, some cymbal action, and we’re back in the territory which I associate with Renault and why I love him so. Not to mention when at the two minute mark a new instrument comes in. Love that. Sometimes the vibe of the start of the song returns, and then it thankfully goes away again. So stretches of the song I like, but it’s not my favorite Renault edit. Not everything can be golden.

http://hypem.com/track/1089885/Jacques+Renault+OTP+Party+Breaks+2+-+B201+Miranda

‘Fool’s Day’ by Blur

Hey, I love Blur as much as the next guy, and some song I really, really love. This one sounds a bit like what it actually is, something done in between jobs. It’s not really that special, the message we’ve heard before, and the only positive thing is that it is Blur, and that band can’t go below “adequate”. With that said, it is just that, merely a nice tune. Not something I would pay 100 pounds for or whatever it is going for on E-Bay at the moment.

http://hypem.com/track/1096367/Blur+-+Fool+s+Day

Blur at Hyde Park

In the final few weeks of 2008, something unexpected happened. Yes, it had been mooted and thrown around as a rumour for quite some time, but nobody was really sure if it would ever actually come about. Then it did: with sepia-toned photographs of Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, entwined and grinning, splashed across an NME feature, Blur reformed.

Maybe it wasn’t such an amazing feat after all; Take That and the Spice Girls had set the trend, and Blur’s bassist Alex James had strongly hinted that a reunion was on the cards. It still felt incredibly special though, especially after Coxon and Albarn’s major success with their solo interests had seemed to take them in very different directions. While Coxon veered from the punk-inspired riffage of his 2004-era solo work towards a Nick Drake-style folk in 2009, Albarn built on the foundations of his work as an ethnomusicologist in Africa, developed the innovative Gorillaz project and teamed up with legendary musicians for The Good The Bad & The Queen (2007). Just how would the men behind ‘Parklife’ and ‘Country House’ find a way to meet back in the middle?

On a personal note, Blur were the first “proper” band that mattered to me. Like most 10-year-old girls in 1996, I was enthralled by The Spice Girls but hit a sort of zenith when I belatedly discovered Blur by way of Parklife (1994). Its catchy pop hooks are a draw for anyone who’s a sucker for a good tune but it was the quirks that really grabbed my attention: the stand-alone melancholy of the brass intro to ‘Badhead’, the hypnotic bass drum beats in ‘Girls and Boys’ and the squeal of computer games in ‘Jubilee’. Blur grabbed me in a way that other guitar groups never quite did and there the love affair began, never to be put asunder; a few years ago I wrote my university dissertation on Albarn’s work with Gorillaz, much to the chagrin of my Handel-loving lecturers.

Technically, Blur never split up; like childhood sweethearts, they simply grew apart. It’s easy to see how Coxon became disillusioned with Blur’s new direction on the ever cathartic 13 (1999), especially considering that the previous record Blur (1997) was widely hailed as “Graham’s album” thanks to its rockier and fuzzier presentation.

The central spectacle was soon revealed: a homecoming gig in London’s Hyde Park and their first live show for six years. Those of us who waited with baited breath and hovering cursors for the presale tickets thought we were going to be the lucky few who witnessed the reformation (give or take 50,000 others). Then a glut of other gigs trickled into being: a second Hyde Park date, a small nationwide tour and headline slots at Glastonbury and T in The Park. Were Blur going to end up diluting the effect or punching home the meaning?

I should have been rapturous, having won the chance to see my favourite band with a full roll call (at Leeds Festival 2003 they played without Coxon). Yet instead of being excited beyond belief I got a weird feeling about the whole thing. Coxon told The Sun that he wanted to play songs from Think Tank, even though he originally abandoned the recording sessions for this album partway through as he disagreed with the direction that the music was taking. A second greatest hits album, Midlife, was announced, featuring the uber-rare ‘Popscene’ which had never before been released on an album. These small things just rankled with me, as well as contradicting the things that I held most dear about Blur; in particular their strong sense of independence for such a big band, as well as their tendency to avoid the obvious.

Having somehow managed to shy away from the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage, as well as friends’ reviews and videos of the exclusive Goldsmiths’ College and Rough Trade East shows, I went into Friday’s Hyde Park event with a fresh mind. However, I knew that I wanted new material, the weird and the wonderful. I didn’t really want to hear the pompous brass of the slightly cringeworthy ‘Country House’, a song that the band used to make obvious they hated; not even the lacklustre and predictable ‘Song 2’, not anymore. The ‘greatest hits’ set is, of course what we got. Glimmers of the Blur I love shone through in moments like Modern Life Is Rubbish (1992)’s shimmery buzz track ‘Oily Water’, Blur’s ‘Death Of A Party’ and the super-cool ‘Trimm Trabb’, one of the more experimental tracks on 13. The latter is a song that Coxon allegedly disliked but one that he finished at Hyde Park lying on his back, strumming wildly, face scrunched tight. It just seemed a bit too contrived.

The ballads (‘The Universal’, ‘To The End’, ‘Badhead’) were typically beautiful and highlighted the sweet side of Blur that often gets forgotten behind the ‘Parklife’s and the ‘Girls and Boys’s. ‘Beetlebum’ and ‘For Tomorrow’ were spot on, both era-defining and showcasing Blur’s inherent variety. There is no doubting it was a great show but all too often the day felt overly clichéd. Of course, the vast majority of the crowd happily handed over their £50 awaiting an array of classics, but I’d been hoping for something more. When, in the middle of ‘Out Of Time’, the guy behind me said, “Well, they’re no Oasis, are they?” I felt like I was in the wrong place. Seeing a slim Alex James with white T-shirt and perfectly floppy fringe gnawing on a cigarette, looking like he’d just stepped out of a time machine, just underlined the oddity of the whole event.

This unexpected sense of unease only served to be exacerbated by flashing signs on the stage, highlighting that recordings of tonight’s set were now on sale (the final chord of ‘The Universal’ was still ringing). Blur’s Hyde Park got them rave reviews but from a band I’d always classed as innovators, who pushed boundaries without often realising it, it’s disappointing to say that they played the big easy hand.

Coxon hinted to NME earlier this year that “there could be more to come” from Blur, keeping in line with the band’s uniform ‘never say never’ attitude. I hope this is true, as little would please me more than a new Blur record. Nothing was given away at Hyde Park and it’s boggling to consider the roads they could head down now, given all that has passed since Coxon’s estrangement. Albarn’s foray into the realm of digital music with Gorillaz blurred the line between fiction and reality, as animated cartoons performed live with real musicians. His penchant for characterisation with both Blur and Gorillaz acted as a screen for Albarn, whose struggle with celebrity and fame was well-documented.

Don’t get me wrong – it was fabulous to hear some of my favourite songs played live again. It’s just that, after what had gone before, I was hoping for a little more from the second coming and, to me, it failed to properly deliver.

We Have Band

June 28, 2009

Sunday: a day spent mainly at the Pyramid. This means a walk up to The Park for Micachu and The Shapes is out of the question and we’re stuck watching Status Quo. This won’t do, we decide not to wait for their hits and head back down to John Peel for We Have Band, winner of the festival’s Emerging Talent competition. We are glad to see them play to a healthy amount of people and the three way sharing of “Oh, oh, oh” on ‘Oh!’ is some of the best fun we have had all weekend.

Later Tony Christie is on the Pyramid doing ‘Amarillo’, a conga weaves past us and man, woman and child are grinning like simpletons. We are still buzzing though after hearing the masterful ‘Walk Like a Panther’ in person and wanting to seek out last year’s Made In Sheffield which we never got round to hearing at the time. It’s then back into the Guardian Lounge for more cake, tea and newspapers and the relaxing aural soundscape of The Penguin Café Orchestra. There’s no rousing of anyone from the floor this time, though.

We had the pleasure of seeing Sir Tom Jones play in Las Vegas last year and raved to people how much oomph and power he still had in those lungs of his. Though we can barely see the screens through the massed throng of Welsh flags, let alone the stage (and none of the flags are a hundredth as funny as the ‘Fist Me Jesus’ one from last year.) and sound problems mean the first few songs are lost into nowhere. I would recommend the Tom-Jones-in-nightclub-setting over outdoor festival if you get the choice, as good as it is to hear ‘Delilah’, ‘Kiss’, ‘It’s Not Unusual’ and ‘She’s A Lady’; they don’t sound quite right out here. His cover of EMF’s ‘Unbelievable’, a nod back to when he last played the festival in 1992, will never sound right though.

One final visit to the John Peel Stage for Ladyhawke and we are a little surprised to see more people than at Jarvis last night – even though she clashes with Madness and Bat For Lashes. Probably enough to fill the bottom section of Brixton Academy we’d wager. The crowd are very up for it and it feels like they are singing along to everything. The last three tracks of ‘Back of the Van’, ‘Paris Is Burning’ and ‘My Delirium’ send them, bonkers. Interesting times await Pip Brown I feel, was she just too early to get on the Sound of 2009 hype train?

Last year we saw Mumford and Sons play in a tee-pee to about 20 people well after Jay-Z’s headlining set. This year, at the Chess Club/Mi7 stage, there’s closer to 300 under and around the tent. We proudly sing along as they play highlights from their early EPs, including ‘White Blank Page’, ‘Little Lion Man’ and ‘Roll Away Your Stone’. ‘The Cave’ is also sounding as massive as anything we’ve heard so far. The album is finished, they announce mid-way through from the stage, and we can’t help but feel it’s going to be very impressive. We hang around as long as we can during Laura Marling’s set, gathered masses straining to even see her. They have problems hearing her sing too as the whole crowd seem to sing along, softly of course, to ‘Ghosts’ and ‘My Manic and I’.

And then it’s Blur - and they’re masterful, no doubt about it. As they work through a chunk of earlier material including the popular with me if no-one else ‘Tracy Jacks’, ‘Jubilee’ and ‘Badhead’ from Parklife and delighting the crowd with a thrash through ‘Girls and Boys’. Graham is looking as cool as ever, Damon is losing years with every song, Dave is Dave and Alex chuffs away on a fag, looking more like heroes of our youth and less like an opera composer, solo guitarist, politician and cheese maker. They give everyone annother sing-along to ‘Country House’ which has superb backing vocals despite what anyone may say about it. Phil Daniels and Damon wrestle over the microphone for ‘Parklife’, though as fun as these all were, the real highlights are on the slower numbers. Damon breaksdown in tears with the full force of emotion at the climax of ‘To The End’, and we get something in our eye as the solo to ‘This Is A Low’ roars at us. The crowd sings a capella to ‘Tender’, never a song I thought was that popular with the public en masse. They even “oh my baby” to call back the band an encore. Twice. By the time ‘The Universal’ dims, we wonder if a band so tied to a press-driven music scene did free a back catalogue of some of the best songs of the 1990s. Yes it really, really did happen,

Blur

June 26, 2009

After a series of intimate gigs chosen for the nostalgic weight of their locations, Blur make the step-up to the MEN Arena tonight, prior to heading off to Glastonbury and London. After a prematurely-dated Klaxons set bereft of any new material whatsoever, the four-piece begin their show as they began their career back in 1990, with the dreamy if naïve ‘She’s So High’, an unremarkable baggy homage which then betrayed little of the invention to come over the next decade.

Instantly following with ‘Girls and Boys’, the track which arguably kicked the Britpop movement into fifth gear, it’s a hits-heavy set, with scant room for obscurity – although the devastating ‘Trimm Trabb’ and immensely funky ‘Oily Water’ (part of three consecutive choices from the underrated Modern Life Is Rubbish) are amongst the less well-known highlights.

The setlist is conservative yet effective, with many tracks grouped together according to their particular era; it’s more single-led than the recent compilation would have us believe. Predictably, the crowd reserve their most ecstatic levels of enthusiasm for yob-rock staples such as the hollow ‘Country House’ (preceded by a rather ambiguous observation/analogy on the death of Michael Jackson) and a breakneck run through ‘Parklife’ with special guest Phil Daniels intact. Other than an overlong rendition of the arguably plodding ‘Tender’, it’s a tight, thrilling show. Constantly goosebump-inducing, to see Graham Coxon finally completing the jigsaw and adding spine-tingling melancholia to a previously Coxon-free ‘Out of Time’ is pretty special. Blur roly-poly through ‘Popscene’, delivered as if they’re the ferocious twenty-somethings of yesteryear.

Closing with the immense warmth of ‘For Tomorrow’, and ‘The Universal’ – a track now impossible to disassociate from British Gas marketing campaigns – it remains to be seen what their plans are after these summer dates. It seems somehow strange to see Damon Albarn intoxicated on verse-chorus-verse indie nostalgia after the massive eclecticism of his numerous side projects, but if they were to carry on where they left off at the start of the decade, a new album would be more than welcome.

The public anticipation (or great relief) directed towards the reunion reminds us that not one single chart-bothering band has emerged with one iota of the timelessness, natural giftedness, invention, wit and poignancy of Albarn‘s combo during the largely piss-weak, polished, diluted, shallow, backwards and scenester-friendly 2000s UK guitar scene.

It has also been pleasing to note the instantaneous vanishing of the Kaiser Chiefs since the announcement of these gigs.

Glastonbury, née the Mississippi

Please follow us, if you aren’t already. The Muso’s Guide Twitter can be found by clicking anywhere in aforementioned three words.

Spoilers so far revealed are as such: Klaxons are guesting at the Park Stage on Friday. As well as that excitement, there’s of course some other special as-yet-unannounced guests on Friday, a massive name who Emily Eavis says would cause a humongous health and safety risk if revealed.

The only way to find out (well, the best way…) is to, you guessed it, follow us. So do it now.

Review coverage and all that jazz shall follow in due course – and let’s be seancing for good weather for our roving reporter, Mitchell Stirling.

See you on the other side!

Blur's Alex James - image by ex zilla

June 22, 2009

I’d liked to have started this review off by going on about how special it was to be arriving at such a small venue, littered with reminders of what university life was like and painfully similar to the school halls of my childhood. This sentimental feel was very much in keeping with what Blur’s music has meant to me, personally, over the years. I think I aged a good five years when my big sister handed me a copy of Leisure when I was ten years-old, while I vividly remember dragging my mum on a bus ride to Our Price in Islington the day The Great Escape came out.

The trouble is, David Walliams – a mountain of a man, I might add – was lurking around the entrance hall as we arrived. This symbol of British popular culture in the “noughties” was a stark reminder that this was no ordinary trip down memory lane for that small ginger kid bopping to ‘There’s No Other Way’ in his bedroom, wondering how that guitar made all those sounds. This was a real event. What was once my own small secret was now… oh, and there’s Jude Law.

When the band saunter on just a few minutes after their promise of eight o’clock, and swagger into the opening number from their 1991 debut LP, the crowd sway and groove, all the while mindfully transfixed on the figure stood in the middle of the stage. His eyes locked on the ceiling above him, Damon Albarn looks like a man praying to the Goldsmiths Gods, a lead singer watching nigh on twenty years of his life roll by and culminate in the right here, right now.

For a minute it looks as though he won’t be snapping out of it anytime soon. But then he does, strolling to the microphone and sending everybody present back to the moment they originally fell in love with his band. ‘Girls And Boys’ quickly follows, resulting in an impromptu contest aiming to find out who can pogo the highest, while Damon is up to his old tricks, getting up close and personal with his audience. He’s like a jumped up so-and-so at a football match and it’s bloody brilliant to see again.

“Where have you been?” somebody yells out between songs. “Heh. Where’ve we been?” Damon responds, the collar of his Fred Perry polo shirt suddenly seeming a little tighter. “Well, we were in Southend last night!” The lack of sentiment in the response was just what the question needed; Mr. Albarn is a man clearly proud of his post-Blur work and one can’t help but feel, judging by this showing, the time off was certainly a blessing for band and fans alike.

With glasses slipping down his nose at an alarming rate, Graham Coxon is conjuring up his bedazzling noises and still boggling the mind. And while ‘Tender’ provides a reason to gush at his and Damon’s presence on stage together, it is ‘Beetlebum’s back-end, lifted to headier heights than ever through sheer musical determination, that really ploughs its way through hearts and minds. There’s some sound provided by this pokey student union and Blur are certainly getting the most out of it.

Looking up to see a slim Alex James blow away his cheese-eating, farmyard-wandering persona with a slinky monitor-mounting pose and Dave Rowntree (for Prime Minister) keeping it all together like a designated driver sure is a sight to behold. But closing your eyes and letting the sound wash over you was where it’s really at in New Cross. And while you aren’t doing that you’re having one of around sixty bottles of water chucked over your face by Damon; it really is too hot, but we’re all too young to care.

Once ‘The Universal’ brings the house down and the lights come up, there’s a sense that what just happened was all a dream. Two hours of what is likely the best set I’ve ever heard at a gig has left the shiny walls eerily dripping with sweat. It’s surprisingly quiet too. I’m back in 1995, leaving that record store on a school night, already excited about rushing in early to tell my friends about it all the next day.

Blur

Following their comeback show on Saturday, Graham Coxon exclusively revealed via his Twitter page that Blur are playing a London show tonight (Monday June 15).

Wristbands are available to the first 170 people to turn up at Brixton Academy NOW so get your skates on. The show will not be taking place there, and the current rumours suggest that it will be at Rough Trade East. It’ll be a scorcher…

UPDATE: It is NOT happening at Rough Trade. We have been told this via official e-mail. If you know where it is, reveal all to the world now!

Blur

As a warm-up for their massive, huge, gigantic, showstopping shows, Blur have announceD a duo of intimate club shows to raise money for charidee.

These fan club only dates were announce this morning at blur.co.uk, and will come before the band’s appearances at Hyde Park, the MEN Arena, Oxegen, T In The Park and Glastonbury.

On June 13, they will be making a return to the East Anglian Railway Museum, the venue of their first ever gig. The proceeds will go to the Aldham Village Hall Restoration Project and the museum itself.

And they will also be playing London’s Goldsmith College on June 22, with proceeds going to the Teenage Cancer Trust.

I wrote your number on my hand but it came off in the rain

OK, let’s get it out of the way now - we were totally right about Glastonbury, as was everyone else who made a half-arsed prediction, presumably.

The mother of all festivals confirmed that, yes, both Blur and Neil Young were topping the bills, as anticipated. Many have smirked at Glastonbury’s “old-timer” approach this year, but it looks pretty damn classic to me – festies are always about the best of the best, aren’t they?

If you want guaranteed sunshine and sand with your live music this summer, then you’re going to be hard pushed to beat Benicassim 2009. After announcing a whole host of big names last month including Oasis and The Killers, FiberFib have since added Lily Allen, Glasvegas and The Mystery Jets to their line-up. It’s like the Spanish version of V, and talking of which, tickets went on sale to the V Festival last week with the Chelsmford site selling out in record time. No surprise really, with the PRS’s revelation that live music is what rakes in the cash these days.

The Isle of Wight Festival has had some interesting additions this week, namely Maximo Park and White Lies. The Seaclose Park festival is also stealing Neil Young before he toddles off to Glastonbury. Jarvis Cocker, who is currently playing classic Pulp songs at SXSW, is set to headline the Secret Garden Party, which is having an Eden and Babylon theme. Well, we suppose Jarvis has sung a lot of songs about the latter…

Tickets for festivals across the world are available by clicking this link.